Hey, look!

 

Tate Gallery Alberto Giacometti

 

Austin Kleon wrote recently about how blogging is about "pointing at things."  He cites another blogger saying: "blogging is looking at things and falling in love."

But it's not just blogging, he says.  

Of course, all art is, in a sense, pointing at things! The artist sees something and she points to it so you can see it, too.  Hedda Sterne, in an interview with Art in America, said she thought art was about, saying, “Hey, look!”

"The intention, the purpose, is not to show your talent but to show something…. I had a very great urgency to show, to share. The cat brings you in things, you know? It was that kind of thing. I discovered things and wanted to share them."

Sterne emphasized that she pointed away from herself. To Bomb magazine: “I see myself as a well-working lens, a perceiver of something that exists independently of me: don’t look at me, look at what I’ve found.”

And, specifically, it's about writing, he says.

It’s the same for writers: Good writing is often just pointing at things.

In his most recent newsletter, Oliver Burkeman suggests that people who want to make writing less hard should just think about showing people something that you’ve noticed. “Look, over there,” your writing should ask, “can you see?

“When you write,” says Steven Pinker, “you should pretend that you, the writer, see something in the world that’s interesting, that you are directing the attention of your reader to that thing in the world, and that you are doing so by means of conversation.”

At the heart of all these things is a person's ability to notice things, to be open enough to perceive freshly, to shrug off the habitual ways of seeing.  

This is reminding me of what is at the heart of mindfulness practice.  of "beginner's mind" that Jack Kornfield talks about in the 40-day mindfulness course he does with Tara Brach.  Here are my notes from his session on beginner's mind:

Seeing with fresh mind with clear eyes and renewed presence.  Accurate observations of clarity of perception.  See things they are, not filtered by old perceptions.  Natural joy, fully feeling sensation.  Be curious and interested without judgment, discover fresh response.  What does the mysterious process of being alive feel like right now?  Imagine watching newborn breath for first time.  All experience are new.  Interest, wonder.  Different, novel texture.  Experience river of life with kindness and freshness.  Witness the mysterious appearance of life moment by moment.  Note how ephemeral and transparent thoughts are.  Carry this into your daily life...  shower, eat, listen to music, watch the setting sun. 

So, to live mindfully, to live "artistically" in the ways noted above (I know there are other ideas about what being artistic means), to be able to write well (I would add, to be able to be compassionate to others and to see our true relationship to nature), is to be able to apprehend things clearly, newly.  To be open, receptive.  To be consitantly seeing, perceiving, and saying, "Hey, look!"